Twenty One Years
by fieldagent85
Summary: Clark thinks back to some defining moments in his parents’ marriage. Spoilers through 2.12.


The first time Clark Kent realized that his parents existed for purposes beyond that of ensuring his own well being, he was approaching his seventh birthday. He had woken from a bad dream, a jarring one of green rocks and blinding lights, and had cried out for his mother and then, after no success, for his father. When neither responded to his call, Clark was convinced something was gravely wrong and even at such an early age, he felt it was his duty to save them from whatever threat plagued them.

He tiptoed out of his bed, light on his feet as always, and slowly opened his bedroom door, peeking his head out to survey the area. Having determined that the hallway was clear, he scurried through the hallway, stopping at his parents closed door. He had never seen it closed, always open slightly ajar, and this new development troubled him greatly. He frowned and put his ear against the door, listening intently. The sounds were foreign to him, thus he then saw fit to further investigate. He carefully turned the doorknob and pushed the door open only enough to see in.

Clark noticed first the blankets on the floor. It was the middle of winter, so surely they would be needed. His eyes darted then to the random items of clothing strewn about the room in a disorderly fashion and furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. Turning his attention to the slow, deliberate movements beneath the sheets, Clark found himself at a loss. Though at first unsure his parents were the cause of such movements, he noticed the shimmer of his mother's auburn hair and knew it could be no one else. Still, he was baffled. Clearly whatever was occurring did not perturb his parents in the least, which Clark determined by the delighted giggle elicited by his mother followed by a sharp intake of breath that made him jump.

Clark slowly began backing out of the room as he heard his father whisper his mother's name repeatedly in a way he had never heard and closed the door on his way out. He walked slowly back to his room in a confused daze and vowed to question their behavior in the morning, to demand an explanation. Hours later, when he woke in time to watch his father head out to the barn, he had forgotten the incident completely. It wasn't until the experience, like history, repeated itself seven years later that the memory returned to him.

His next notable brush with the independence of his parents came at the awkward and bemused age of ten. He had still been at the table finishing his dinner when Jonathan and Martha Kent excused themselves to the barn, as they always did they believed their words and actions didn't concern him, which of course in Clark's mind was always false, as all things concerned him. Abandoning his chicken nuggets and what was left of his macaroni and cheese, he stealthily followed them outside, resisting the temptation to use his speed, and stood hidden but just within earshot of their conversation. He had missed the first thirty seconds of their exchange, arriving in time to notice the tears in his mother's eye, accompanied by a smile, a combination Clark found to be quite unusual. His father's expression did not match his mother's, rather it matched his own, one of dubious bafflement and careful curiosity.

"Sweetheart, you know that can't be," Jonathan said as gently as possible, with both hands on her shoulders.

She shook her head fervently, with a fierceness Clark saw only on occasion, when she was not to be dismissed. "Jonathan, I _feel_ it. You have to trust me."

"But we've been trying for almost fifteen years, the doctors haven't been optimistic in over a decade, if ever…"

Clark shuddered. The doctor had never been a particularly pleasant experience for him; he assumed his mother felt the same. She did, though not quite for the same reasons. Clark had always been vaguely aware of his parents' inability to conceive, never fully understanding yet somehow grasping the general concept, but it was something of a taboo topic of discussion in the Kent household. They had been trying to get pregnant for about five years before Clark miraculously dropped into their lives, with no success. They had thought about investigating the problem, but feared the hidden, unintentional resentment that would follow upon learning which of the two of them was the root of it. Seeing no need for it, they had stopped using birth control and never resumed, as it seemed unnecessary. Nothing had ever come of it until now.

"Honey, I just don't want you to get your hopes up."

"I'm two weeks late, I'm tired all the time, I can smell everything, and…" She put her hands on his chest and looked up at him desperately, persistently, fearfully. "I can _feel_ it."

"But how, after all this time…"

Martha shrugged, as if the details could not have interested her less. "I don't know. But the way I see it, we're in no position to question it."

The next day, Clark stayed behind at the farm with his father while his mother took a trip to see their general practitioner. He noted with interest how distracted Jonathan seemed to be, unable to focus on both Clark and the tasks at hand. A few days passed, and the tension was still palpable. Martha was happier than Clark had ever seen her, confident and thrilled by her assumed condition. Jonathan was not quite as convinced, which was the cause of the occasional mild altercation between the two. She was offended by his lack of faith in her and he was concerned by her unconditional confidence. Every time the phone rang, one or both would invariably jump. When the call finally came, Martha had answered it eagerly, and upon hearing his wife speak their doctor's name, Jonathan had stood close by.

"Yes," Martha said into the receiver, nodding expectedly. "Yes." There was a pause, and Clark noticed his mother's expression change rapidly. "I see. Thank you, Doctor." Slowly, she put the phone down and turned to her husband, looking as if she was going to spontaneously shatter into a million little pieces. Clark waited, eyes wide, and sat in horror as Martha suddenly burst into tears. Jonathan closed his eyes contritely, as if blaming his own lack of faith for the negative result, and wrapped his arms around his wife, holding her tightly.

"I'm sorry," Martha whispered almost inaudibly through her tears. "I'm so sorry."

"Shh, sweetheart," Jonathan replied softly, holding onto her even tighter, as if his life depended on it. "It's all right, it's okay."

For many moments, Clark ceased to matter. He felt small and insignificant, as if the unborn child that had never existed had been his replacement and now without it, he could never truly make them happy.

He had never really seen his parents fight until he was fourteen. They had disagreed, maybe even argued, but never fought, not in the way that Chloe's parents did. Early in the summer of 2000, Jonathan and Martha Kent fought, in the truest sense of the word. Clark had, of course, proven to be an extraordinarily special boy over the years, and they had always struggled with how to handle him. Things he could and couldn't do, places he could and couldn't go. His powers had often limited him more than anything else. He had attended public school since kindergarten, despite the ambivalence of his parents, but when the time came for Clark to attend high school, Martha at last objected.

This was one of those rare moments when his parents switched roles. More often than not, his mother took the more lenient position, preferring to let him test and explore his powers in new situations, hoping that he would grow and learn from these experiences, while his father tended to err on the side of caution and liked keep a close eye on his son. In this instance, they had pulled a _Freaky Friday_. Martha was fervent about Clark not going to high school. High school was vicious, she said, it wasn't like elementary school or junior high. Clark could lose control. Kids would ask questions.

"This isn't Metropolis, Martha," Jonathan had countered, and more than once. "This is Smallville High, total student population 535. I know you're used to the violent, intense, take-no-prisoners lifestyle of the city, but this is different. Everyone _knows_ Clark, they trust him, and they love him. They're not out to get him."

Martha wasn't convinced. She had gone to a high school where the total amount of students in her senior class was 535. The total student population of the entire school was upwards of two thousand. Things moved quickly, no one stayed friends for long, and everyone was looking for a way to one-up the next person. Her own high school experience had been one she wasn't proud of. She herself had moved quickly, plowed through friends on a regular basis, and was continuously looking for dirt on her fellow students to one-up them, just as her father had taught her to do. She would just as soon home school Clark herself than put him through a similar experience while trying to conceal his powers.

"It's not worth the risk," Martha insisted, causing her husband to scoff. "Maybe you had the ideal high school experience – popular star quarterback, straight A's, friends with every single one of your fellow students – but this is a new generation, and Clark is not you."

It was true, Jonathan had had what some would call the ideal high school experience. It was a small school, in a small town, where everyone literally knew everyone else and Jonathan had made friends with all of them. He couldn't help it. He was just a generally amiable guy, he liked people, and people liked him. He was intelligent and hard-working as the son of a farmer and managed to consistently pull good grades despite spending the majority of his time alternating between working on the farm and playing on the football team. He had a steady girlfriend, Nell Potter, throughout most of high school whom everyone in town predicted he would marry in quick succession. That plan had been easily thwarted in the years following graduation, when he took a finance course at Metropolis University and met a certain Martha Clark, who offered him so much more than Smallville ever had.

"You should have a little faith in him, Martha," Jonathan said, accusatorily. "He's a bright kid, with a good head on his shoulders, and he's always been responsible in his decision-making. I think you underestimate him."

When they met, Jonathan viewed Martha as something of an exotic. She was sharp, quick to quip, fiercely independent, and stronger certainly than any woman he had come across in Smallville. A beautiful, fiery redhead, she represented the quintessential modern woman. Martha had been instantly charmed by Jonathan's congeniality, his easiness. He was comfortable in all situations it seemed, and with all people. Always ready with a smile and a kind word, he was the type of man she had seen in the movies and long since decided were nothing more than imaginary, as she had yet to encounter one in Metropolis. He also possessed a certain rugged sensuality that attracted her from the very first moment they met. Together, they symbolized the best of both worlds, in the most literal sense, and though the match was ferociously disapproved of by her father, neither one could even entertain the possibility of loving anyone else.

The fight over the remainder of Clark's education continued well into July, exasperating Clark himself to no end. The tension between them have given way to smaller fights branching off the original one, anything from forgetting to pick up vegetable oil at the grocery store to unintentionally neglecting to pay the electric bill. Anything could set them off, and Clark had never seen anything like it, certainly not in _his_ house, and he couldn't help but feel guilty for causing it. He tried to keep his own opinion mute, for fear of hurting one of them, and even when they asked, he would recuse himself. Then, one morning early in August, Clark returned home from a day at the lake with Pete and Chloe to find a Smallville High t-shirt waiting for him on his bed. He grinned, this being the decision he had secretly hoped for, and took the shirt with him as he ran around the farm in search of his parents. He found them together behind the barn, unloading bundles of hay from the truck.

"What's all this about?" Clark asked, holding up the shirt.

"I hope that's where you wanted to go, son, because that's where you're going," Jonathan said, smiling.

"But how did you…" he trailed off. "When I left this morning, you were at each other's throats."

"Clark," Martha said admonishingly, with her practiced "mother knows best" glare. "We were not…at each other's throats."

"If I remember correctly, you were calling Dad a 'no-good hick farmer with no sense of decorum' as I was walking out the door."

Martha blushed. "Heat of the moment."

"_Moment_? You've been at war all summer!" Clark exclaimed, unable to conceal his own bafflement.

"To tell you the truth, Clark," Jonathan began. "This wasn't about you at all."

Clark stared back at them blankly. "What?"

"It was a foil," Martha responded calmly. "We sort of…subconsciously used your education plans to get out our anger about something entirely different."

"Your grandfather offered your mother an opportunity to accompany him for some business transactions in Europe over the summer," Jonathan said.

"And you didn't want her to go?" Clark assumed.

"Oh, no, I wanted her to go."

"_I _didn't want to go," Martha said. "Your father insisted that it would do me good to get out, but I couldn't see anything good about being away from the two of you all summer."

"So, this whole time, all the yelling and screaming, was about…that?"

"Pretty silly, huh?" Jonathan remarked. "But, you know, I was afraid that if she didn't go, she would only resent me for it and not to mention, miss out on a fine opportunity to travel to places I could never take her."

Martha rolled her eyes. "And I told him I didn't want to see any of those places without him anyway, but you know your father is a _very_ persistent man," she said with a wink.

"And all this time you had _me _feeling guilty for being the cause of all this," Clark sighed.

Jonathan laughed and gave him a sound pat on the back. "Think of it as a character-building exercise."

Jonathan Kent had always been the most together, solid of men. Always steadfast, never wavering. Clark took great comfort in knowing that his father would be strong of mind and attitude even if he couldn't toss a tractor a mile down the road or smash through a cement wall with only his hands. Even in the face of danger, Jonathan remained calm. Except, Clark noticed at the age of sixteen, where his mother was concerned.

On the day of their twentieth wedding anniversary, Clark had watched his parents fight. She had to work, she told him, Lionel had insisted. It was almost as if Lionel _knew_ it was their anniversary, Clark noted silently. They had both said things they would soon regret, and she had left. As hard as Clark tried to fix what had broken that morning, Jonathan refused to accept his help. It wasn't until they turned on the evening news and learned of the hostage situation at Luthor Corp. that Jonathan sprung into action, going so far as to beg his sworn nemesis Lex Luthor for his helicopter.

Outside the Luthor Corp. building in Metropolis, Clark watched his father pace the parking lot anxiously, snapping at police officers, never taking his eye off the building. When one of the assailants had held Martha at gunpoint in front of the window and openly threatened her life for all to see, Clark thought Jonathan's knees were going to give out on him. He took his father aside and sat him down near the S.W.A.T. tent.

"Dad," Clark said, with a hand on his shoulder to steady him. "Are you okay?"

Jonathan dropped his head into his hands. "If the last face she sees is his…"

Clark knew exactly who he was talking about. "Dad, that's not going to happen. These guys are amateur. Anyone who would dangle a hostage in front of the police and reveal his own identity can't be the brightest crayon in the box. I'm sure Mom already has a plan to outsmart them. And I hate to say it, but Lionel Luthor is a manipulative mastermind. He's probably outsmarting them as we speak."

"I swear to god, Clark, if she comes out of this with so much as a scratch, so help me, I will run him into the ground."

"This isn't Lionel's fault, Dad. I know it's easy to blame him, but why would he go through the trouble to orchestrate this?" Clark questioned.

"I don't know. Publicity. Sympathy. To get closer to _her_," Jonathan replied scornfully. "You know what they say about a crisis."

"Dad, that's crazy," Clark responded with a shrug. "Lionel might have a little…thing for Mom, but no way she'd ever fall for that."

Jonathan eventually yielded to his son's wisdom and, in a moment of desperation, consented to Clark entering the building. An hour later, upon leaving the building, Clark watched as his mother ran out the door in search of his father. He smiled and hung back a little when she jumped into his arms, away from the mob of police and spectators. He remember as he watched them the story Martha had told him when the Nicodemus flower had rendered Jonathan unconscious for days. The story of their first meeting, the infamous request of the notes, the instantaneous attraction. "God, I hope he marries me." She had been barely coherent. Jonathan had told him the same story when the kryptonite toxin had put Martha on the verge of death nearly a year later. He had known all along that she was the note taker for the class; he had noticed her on the very first day and his eyes had seen no one but her whenever she was in the room. His friends had discouraged him from even trying - "God, I hope she looks at me." – until at last she approached him.

Clark found it hard to believe that it had been twenty-one years since then.


End file.
